The Art of Ice: How an ice technician manages the cold stuff for Olympic athletes

Did you know that ice temperatures need to be different for ice hockey, figure skating and short track speed skating? Mind blown, right?

Did you also know that different seasons, the amount of spectators, and even the clarity of the water will impact the ice, causing a knock-on effect to an elite athlete’s performance?

Jonathan Woolgar knows all about it. He’s an ice technician at the National Ice Centre (NIC) in Nottingham, central England, home to GB figure skating, ice hockey and short track speed skating athletes.

Winter sport magic is infused in the venue, sitting as it does on Bolero Square, in homage to 1984 Olympic champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. The figure skating pair used to train at the previous incarnation of the venue, which was rebuilt in 2000.

The winter sport success story continues. It is now the training ground for three-time short track speed skating world champion, triple Olympian and Beijing 2022 medal hopeful, Elise Christie, and her GB teammates.

The Arena also plays host to events like GB women’s ice hockey, who, in early October, were ultimately unsuccessful in their bid to make it to the final Beijing 2022 qualifying tournament despite roaring support from the home crowd. The side just lost out in the last match to the Republic of Korea, who progressed.

The first dual Olympic-sized ice pad venue in the UK also hosts conferencing and major events like gigs and concerts. So with all of this going on, what does it take to maintain ice fit for purpose for elite winter sports athletes?

Tip of the iceberg

Assistant services manager Woolgar and his four colleagues maintain the ice around the clock at the two venues.

The CCM ice rink is used for training and activities for the general public, and the arena for events, both ice and non-ice related. Comedian Ricky Gervais could be on stage one day and a home match for elite ice hockey team, the Nottingham Panthers, could be on the next.

Ice is the basis for both rinks, with the surface insulated and covered over for when the likes of Gervais perform at the Arena.

On a daily basis, at the CCM pad, a three-hour figure skating session could be followed by short track training, before Panthers' practice commences. Private sessions, school classes, practice ice and public access, all need to be managed by Woolgar and his team, but their main focus is the elite athletes.

The three types of elite sport users – figure skaters, ice hockey players and speed skaters – all require different ice temperatures, which are controlled using an ice plant. A newly automated version was installed during the downtime of the COVID-19 pandemic, replacing the previous, more manual version. The new system can be remotely accessed from any internet connection and can be used to plan ice temperatures a week in advance.

“(Figure skating is) the warmest one,” says Woolgar, “which is -3.5 (degrees Celsius), and that's so that they can land their jumps because if the ice is too hard, so if it was a -8, they could potentially have ankle injuries when they land. But then you’ve got speed, which is a bit in between, so they're about -5 for training, about -6 for competition.

"We make it a little bit colder for the competition, just purely down to the fact that there are more people in the bowl, (which) puts a bit of a demand on the ice. Then ice hockey will have it about -5 for training but again, we'll do -8 for the game because we get a lot more spectators.”

Ice palace

Generally, it’s the school-going figure skaters who are the early birds, stepping into the rink at 5am, with the last people, often ice hockey players, potentially leaving the rink at 1am or 2am the next day. So the ice can be in use for 19 hours in a day.

The ice needs to be at the relatively warmer temperature at the start of the day for the figure skaters but if there’s a short track or hockey practice going on straight after there’s quite a big transition. "We set the temps two hours prior to their session," says Woolgar, "so it'll go from -3.5 to -5 within a couple of hours.”

Ice users, especially the general public, won’t notice the changes going on so this all happens while people are still on the ice, enabling a packed ice usage schedule.

Air temperature and humidity is also an issue when trying to keep the ice at a specific solidity. “You want it around 15 degrees, but you also want it around 40 per cent humidity and that's very hard to control,” says Woolgar, “because, for example, pre-season can start in August and you can imagine the temperatures you get outside.”

Likening the effect to constantly opening and closing a fridge door, Woolgar explains that even trying to keep doors closed and the rink contained, the wafts of warm air put a massive demand on the heartbeat of the operation, the ice plant, which is connected to four sensors on the ice pad that detect the changes in temperatures.

Isolated incidents such as lengthy power cuts can be catastrophic, too.

“The ice can stay in for a good 10 hours and not melt,” says Woolgar. “But anything past that, you've got issues – you could lose your whole ice.”

If this happened, it could take between a week and 10 days to reset the ice from scratch. So what exactly does this entail?

Skating on thin ice

If Woolgar was to start the rink from the concrete base, he’d start with a thin layer of water added on top. Once that has frozen, a thin layer of white paint is sprayed on, which is then locked in with water again so that it doesn’t spread. The whole ice pass is then sprayed three or four more times. Hockey markings are then measured out and painted in because they stay there for the lifecycle of that ice. They again, are sealed with water. If a mistake has been made, it must be painted over with the white paint, like a cold version of correction fluid.

Next come the logos, which need to be positioned, painted on and frozen in. Once the whole rink has been locked in, like some kind of multi-layered cake, the ice levels are built up until they reach the optimum depth... of just 3.5cm.

“Any deeper than that,” says Woolgar, “say 5cm or 6cm and the water that you're laying with the machines would take longer to freeze,” and that would “be a bigger pressure demand on the ice plant”. Any less than 2.5cm, and the skaters’ blades might hit the concrete, which is a safety hazard for them and would also damage their blades.

When there’s a new event, such as the World Junior Synchronized Skating Championships that the Arena hosted in 2020, white was sprayed on top of the hockey markings, and the logo for skating’s international governing body, the ISU, was painted on top of that. Additional water layers were then added to achieve the right depth.

“When something like the world synchros finish,” says Woolgar, “we'll scrape away the ice and then we'll be left with the hockey again underneath.”

The machine used to scrape away the ice is the same one Woolgar uses to smooth the surface between competition sessions during an event. The blades are so fine and sharp that they can take off anything from 1mm to 4mm from the layers. Anything more than that becomes too much for the machine.

Cuts no ice

Water quality also has a huge impact on the ice, which needs to be clear enough that logos can be seen but not too pure so that it makes the ice brittle for skaters, says Woolgar. At the NIC, the team treat the local water via a reverse osmosis process in order to take out the impurities, therefore making the water less cloudy.

“Some countries actually have to add things,” says Woolgar, “like adding milk into their water, into their machines, to lay on the ice, to give them a bit more impurity in the ice to get (a better grip) for the skaters because their water's just too pure.”

The expertise in painting logos, maintaining the ice and the equipment comes from 15 years of experience for Woolgar, but he’s also on a path to be officially recognised by the NHL as a certified ice technician. Woolgar has already completed one of the three courses required to achieve the certification – the Ice Making & Painting Technologies – but COVID-19 has put paid to Basic Arena Refrigeration and Ice Maintenance & Equipment Operation, which he hopes to complete when the pandemic allows.

So next time you watch an ice-based sporting event keep an eye out for the machine operator driving around during a break in play; someone like Woolgar will be in the driving seat, in more ways than one.

The Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 start 4 February and finish 20 February.